TeacherJay's EduBlog

With the technological advances of the 21st century does it make sense to continue teaching students with a 19th century mindset?, or do we need to update our concept of what it means to be literate in today’s world?

I came across this video on Edutopia and just had to post it.  The video, Student Body: Classroom Exercise Makes Learning Lively demonstrates “four techniques for mental clarity” that can easily be taught to students.  Take a look:

We are seeing more and more schools cut recess and physical education from their curricula.  Such a [...]

An eBook Education

Turning the Page
eTextbooks on the
College Campus
eBooks in the K-12 Schools
Teaching eReading
eBooks in the Library
Redefining Literacy

Up to now we have been considering the use of eBooks and PDAs for students.  This post will look at the use of this technology by teachers, and will consider its use as a direct teaching [...]

I had long pictured working with DNA to be some abstract and complicated process that took place in far off labs by very experienced scientists.  Working with undergraduate students at Brooklyn College, though, they would tell me about their work with DNA and it seemed so common to them.
The other day I found the following [...]

Not too long ago, a regular commenter on this blog, Faiza Khan, let me know about her startup company, WordAhead.com – a collection of short videos that can help a person to learn some new words and even participate in creating the content.  Always interested in expanding my very own veritably voluminous vocabulary I [...]

What matters more – the memorization of answers to trivial questions or familiarity with the tools to find the answers?

Five years ago today, what is perhaps my favorite education news site, Edutopia, published an article, High Tech in Hawaii: The Real-World Relevance of Technology, about an elementary school in that was incorporating technology into its classrooms.  The article discusses how the school uses technology as a tool for learning and not simply for [...]

It is fascinating to read about events such as the American Revolution in a French textbook … 1) History becomes compartmentalized into an abstract string of facts that is not relevant to the world in which we live today. 2) It fosters a seperationist attitude in American students which will become increasingly damaging as the world grows more and more globally connected … So what should be done about this?

The Winter 2008 issue of Harvard Educational Review contains an interesting article by Pat Clifford and Susan Marinucci on Inquiry-based Learning.  Here is the abstract from the publisher:
In this Voices Inside Schools essay, Dr. Pat Clifford and Susan Marinucci take us inside a classroom engaged in “genuine inquiry.” As we follow Russell and his fellow [...]